The Shenandoah
Though the Virginians were in the mass country folk, yet villages or
hamlets arose, clusters of houses pressing about the Court House of each
county. There were now in the colony over a score of settled counties. The
westernmost of these, the frontier counties, were so huge that they ran at
least to the mountains, and, for all one knew to the contrary, presumably
beyond. But "beyond" was a mysterious word of unknown content, for no
Virginian of that day had gone beyond. All the way from Canada into South
Carolina and the Florida of that time stretched the mighty system of the
Appalachians, fifteen hundred miles in length and three hundred in
breadth. Here was a barrier long and thick, with ridge after ridge of
lifted and forested earth, with knife-blade vales between, and only here
and there a break away and an encompassed treasure of broad and fertile
valley. The Appalachians made a true Chinese Wall, shutting all
England-in-America, in those early days, out from the vast inland plateau
of the continent, keeping upon the seaboard all England-in-America, from
the north to the south. To Virginia these were the mysterious mountains
just beyond which, at first, were held to be the South Sea and Cathay.
Now, men's knowledge being larger by a hundred years, it was known that
the South Sea could not be so near. The French from Canada, going by way
of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, had penetrated very far beyond
and had found not the South Sea but a mighty river flowing into the Gulf
of Mexico. What was the real nature of this world which had been found to
lie over the mountains? More and more Virginians were inclined to find
out, foreseeing that they would need room for their growing population.
Continuously came in folk from the Old Country, and continuously
Virginians were born. Maryland dwelt to the north, Carolina to the south.
Virginia, seeking space, must begin to grow westward.
There were settlements from the sea to the Falls of the James, and
upon the York, the Rappahannock, and the Potomac. Beyond these, in the
wilderness, might be found a few lonely cabins, a scattered handful of
pioneer folk, small blockhouses, and small companies of rangers charged
with protecting all from Indian foray. All this country was rolling and
hilly, but beyond it stood the mountains, a wall of enchantment, against
the west.
Alexander Spotswood, hardy Scot, endowed with a good temperamental
blend of the imaginative and the active, was just the man, the time being
ripe, to encounter and surmount that wall. Fortunately, too, the
Virginians were horsemen, man and horse one piece almost, New World
centaurs. They would follow the bridle-tracks that pierced to the hilly
country, and beyond that they might yet make way through the primeval
forest. They would encounter dangers, but hardly the old perils of
seacoast and foothills. Different, indeed, is this adventure of the
Governor of Virginia and his chosen band from the old push afoot into
frowning hostile woods by the men of a hundred and odd years before!
Spotswood rode westward with a company drawn largely from the
colonial gentry, men young in body or in spirit, gay and adventurous. The
whole expedition was conceived and executed in a key both humorous and
knightly. These Knights set face toward the mountains in August,
1716. They had guides who knew the upcountry, a certain number of rangers
used to Indian ways, and servants with food and much wine in their charge.
So out of settled Virginia they rode, and up the long, gradual lift of
earth above sea-level into a mountainous wilderness, where before them the
Aryan had not come. By day they traveled, and bivouacked at night.
| On the sandy roads of settled Virginia horses went unshod, but for the stony hills and the ultimate cliffs they must have iron shoes. After the adventure and when the party had returned to civilization, the Governor, bethinking himself that there should be some token and memento of the exploit, had made in London a number of small golden horseshoes, set as pins to be worn in the lace cravats of the period. Each adventurer to the mountains received one, and the band has kept, in Virginian lore, the title of the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe. |
Higher and more rugged grew the mountains. Some trick of the
light made them show blue, so that they presently came to be called
the Blue Ridge, in contradistinction to the westward lying, gray
Alleghanies. They were like very long ocean combers, with at
intervals an abrupt break, a gap, cliff-guarded, boulder-strewn,
with a narrow rushing stream making way between hemlocks and pines,
sycamore, ash and beech, walnut and linden.
Towards these blue mountains Spotswood and his knights rode day
after day and came at last to the foot of the steep slope. The long
ridges were high, but not so high but that horse and man might make
shift to scramble to the crest. Up they climbed and from the heights
they looked across and down into the Valley of Virginia, twenty
miles wide, a hundred and twenty long -- a fertile garden spot.
Across the shimmering distances they saw the gray Alleghanies, fresh
barrier to a fresh west. Below them ran a clear river, afterwards to
be called the Shenandoah. They gazed -- they predicted colonists,
future plantations, future towns, for that great valley, large
indeed as are some Old World kingdoms. They drank the health of
England's King, and named two outstanding peaks Mount George and
Mount Alexander; then, because their senses were ravished by the
Eden before them, they dubbed the river Euphrates. They plunged and
scrambled down the mountain side to the Euphrates, drank of it,
bathed in it, rested, ate, and drank again. The deep green woods
were around them; above them they could see the hawk, the eagle, and
the buzzard, and at their feet the bright fish of the river.
At last they reclimbed the Blue Ridge, descended its eastern face,
and, leaving the great wave of it behind them, rode homeward to
Williamsburg in triumph.
We are thus, with Spotswood and his band, on the threshold of
expanding American vistas. This Valley of Virginia, first a distant
Beulah land for the eye of the imagination only, presently became a
land of pioneer cabins, far apart -- very far apart -- then a
settled land, of farms, hamlets, and market towns. Nor did the folk
come only from that elder Virginia of tidal waters and much tobacco,
of "compleat gentlemen" at the capital, and of many slaves in the
fields. But downward from the Potomac, they came south into this
valley, from Pennsylvania and Maryland, many of them Ulster Scots
who had sailed to the western world. In America they are called the
Scotch Irish, and in the main they brought stout hearts, long arms,
and level heads. With these they brought in as luggage the dogmas of
Calvin. They permeated the Valley of Virginia; many moved on south
into Carolina; finally, in large part, they made Kentucky and
Tennessee. Germans, too, came into the valley -- down from
Pennsylvania -- quiet, thrifty folk, driven thus far westward from a
war-ravished Rhine.
Shrewd practicality trod hard upon the heels of romantic fancy in
the mind of Spotswood. His Order of the Knights of the Horseshoe had
a fleeting existence, but the Vision of the West lived on. Frontier
folk in growing numbers were encouraged to make their way from
tidewater to the foot of the Blue Ridge. Spotsylvania and King
George were names given to new counties in the Piedmont in honor of
the Governor and the sovereign. German craftsmen, who had been sent
over by Queen Anne -- vine-dressers and ironworkers -- were settled
on Spotswood's own estate above the falls of the Rapidan. The little
town of Germanna sprang up, famous for its smelting furnaces.
To his country seat in Spotsylvania, Alexander Spotswood retired
when he laid down the office of Governor in 1722. But his talents
were too valuable to be allowed to rust in inactivity. He was
appointed deputy Postmaster-General for the English colonies, and in
the course of his administration made one Benjamin Franklin
Postmaster for Philadelphia. He was on the point of sailing with
Admiral Vernon on the expedition against Cartagena in 1740, when he
was suddenly stricken and died. He was buried at Temple Farm by
Yorktown. On the expedition to Cartagena went one Lawrence
Washington, who named his country seat after the Admiral and whose
brother George many years later was to receive the surrender of
Cornwallis and his army hard by the resting-place of Alexander
Spotswood. Colonial Virginia lies behind us. The era of revolution
and statehood beckons us on.
Back to: Virginia and the Southern Colonies
